“When we were making music together I was thinking of it as being from this imaginary place, this island in between our musical worlds,” explains Lewis of the Brazilian-inspired compositions. Mirage transplants her dreamy sound to a fabulous fictional land, this time with accompaniment by master South American guitarist Rogê. Somehow, in among all the globetrotting – a peek at her Instagram shows that her last performance was a candlelit concert on a ridiculously scenic Greek island, as well as recent turns at vintage Mexico City dance halls – Lewis found the time to make a second EP. There’s even been a trip to the Yuz Museum in Shanghai where she performed draped in Gucci. There have been invitations to perform Handel’s “Sarabande” with the Orchestre National de Paris at French lingerie shows while surrounded by BMX bikers, and offers to entertain the glitterati during Chanel dinners at the Cannes Film Festival. “I get some very strange requests in my DMs – but not from boys,” she says of the direct messages she receives via Instagram. What was once an underground eccentricity was now a cult concern and the debut EP also brought with it a host of outlandish international appearances.
Upon graduating with a film studies degree from the University of Sydney, she spent her early twenties in Berlin.īut it was the release of The Forgotten Edge that really changed the course of Lewis’s life. Yet it would be almost a decade until she’d be able to call herself a pro. She would eventually attend as an eager wannabe whistler in 2012.
David Lynch was a father at my elementary school, and I was like, ‘whatever’.” When she was 13, the family moved back to Australia, and there Lewis became strangely enchanted by a 2005 documentary Pucker Up, which warmly detailed an annual International Whistling Competition in North Carolina. “I was too young to really know certain things. “It’s funny growing up in Hollywood,” she explains. Lewis, however, was largely oblivious to her starry upbringing.
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When she was a child, her parents moved to LA to pursue careers in the movie industry – before she was born Lewis’s father had helped French high-wire artist Philippe Petit scale the World Trade Center, a fantastical feat later retold in the 2008 documentary Man on Wire.
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But just how did she end up as a professional whistler, not least one who has collaborated with names as varied as Dr Dre, fashion house Chanel and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?ĭespite her American twang, Lewis was born in the small town of Mullumbimby in New South Wales, Australia.
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She regularly performs at her own fabulous “Cafe Molly” club nights, where she’ll whistle spaghetti western soundtracks, Bond themes and her own compositions, as well as share the stage with the likes of actor-musician John C Reilly and slacker rocker Mac De Marco.
I meet Lewis on a sticky summer’s evening at the infamous Los Angeles hideaway, ahead of the release of her second EP, Mirage. Want a musician who seems like they might soundtrack Quentin Tarantino’s next movie? Molly Lewis is your woman. Lewis’s high-pitched birdsong is endlessly fascinating, sounding not unlike ear-piercing coloratura soprano Yma Sumac, who was the whistle-toned Ariana Grande of her day. It’s a fitting match, as Lewis’s unique, wryly camp confection of tiki-bar blues is quite unlike anything else that’s been released since the heady days of the 1950s exotica boom. The latest star to call herself a regular at the storied restaurant is North America’s premiere whistler, Molly Lewis. One of the greatest remaining bastions of Hollywood’s golden age, Musso & Frank has been beloved of everyone from Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe to Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones.
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